One goal of the communications industry is to provide constant (e.g., “always-on”) voice and data access, especially to mobile users. However, as users move about a given geographic area, products in their possession may encounter the need to transmit and/or receive data according to more than one communications standard, such as those which exist with respect to Wide Area Networks (WANs), Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) and Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs). In addition, the user's device data rate may not equal an allotted channel data rate. Thus, in order to communicate the user's data over a given communications link, the user's device may need to adapt the device standards to the link standards, and the device data rate to the channel data rate via rate matching, that is, by increasing or decreasing the device data rate to match the channel data rate.